As networks of linked computers become an increasingly more prevalent concept in everyday life, so-called "on-line" interactions between computer users has begun to spread into many different areas of our lives. One of these areas is the marketplace for goods and services.
In the past couple of years there has been an explosive growth in the use of the globally-linked network of computers known as the Internet, and in particular of the WorldWide Web (WWW), which is one of the facilities provided on top of the Internet. The WWW comprises many pages or files of information, distributed across many different server computer systems. Information stored on such pages can be, for example, details of a company's organization, contact data, product data and company news. This information can be presented to the user's computer system ("client computer system") using a combination of text, graphics, audio data and video data. Each page is identified by a Universal Resource Locator (URL). The URL denotes both the server machine, and the particular file or page on that machine. There may be many pages or URLs resident on a single server.
In order to use the WWW, a client computer system runs a piece of software known as a graphical Web browser, such as WebExplorer (provided as part of the OS/2 operating system from IBM Corporation), or the Navigator program available from Netscape Communications Corporation. "WebExplorer", "OS/2" and "IBM" are trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation, while "Navigator" and "Netscape" are trademarks of the Netscape Communications Corporation. The client computer system interacts with the browser to select a particular URL, which in turn causes the browser to send a request for that URL or page to the server identified in the URL. Typically the server responds to the request by retrieving the requested page, and transmitting the data for that page back to the requesting client computer system (the client/server interaction is performed in accordance with the hypertext transport protocol ("HTTP")). This page is then displayed to the user on the client screen. The client may also cause the server to launch an application, for example to search for WWW pages relating to particular topics.
Most WWW pages are formatted in accordance with a computer program written in a language known as HTML (hypertext mark-up language). This program contains the data to be displayed via the client's graphical browser as well as formatting commands which tell the browser how to display the data. Thus a typical Web page includes text together with embedded formatting commands, referred to as tags, which can be used to control the font size, the font style (for example, whether italic or bold), how to lay-out the text, and so on. A Web browser "parses" the HTML script in order to display the text in accordance with the specified format. HTML tags are also used to indicate how graphics, audio and video are manifested to the user via the client's browser.
Most Web pages also contain one or more references to other Web pages, which need not be on the same server as the original page. Such references may generally be activated by the user selecting particular locations on the screen, typically by clicking a mouse control button. These references or locations are known as hyperlinks, and are typically flagged by the browser in a particular manner (for example, any text associated with a hyperlink may be in a different colour). If a user selects the hyperlink, then the referenced page is retrieved and replaces the currently displayed page.
Further information about HTML and the WWW can be found in "World Wide Web and HTML" by Douglas McArthur, p18-26 in Dr Dobbs Journal, December 1994, and in "The HTML SourceBook" by Ian Graham, (John Wiley, New York, 1995).
Enterprises (companies) are considering their usage of the World Wide Web. The first phase, namely the publicity of the company in whatever form, has already occurred. Home pages are commonplace, an essential ingredient for any company which wishes to maintain itself in line with current business practices. The publicity material contains marketing information, product brands and, in some cases, product catalogues.
The second phase, namely to conduct commerce, is emerging. Enterprises are poised to conduct business by way of the World Wide Web. They are seeking to make sales of their products and services, by way of the World Wide Web.
Software infrastructure is coming into existence to enable the progress of this trend. Secure financial protocols have been defined and are being implemented. The provision of firewall technologies offer safeguards to the enterprise, without which the enterprise would not contemplate permitting access to its critical data. Gateway products are becoming available to facilitate connection between the World Wide Web and the server machines of the enterprise.
Thus, many suppliers have begun to sell their goods and services over the World Wide Web by placing their catalogues on their Web pages, such catalogues listing content-related information (e.g. product description, price, availability) about the various goods and services offered for sale. They also list their business policies concerning, for example, their cancellation policy. That is, the cancellation policy specifies what will happen if a customer decides to buy something and later changes his mind.
If the buyer tries to do this on his own without any help, this can be a frustrating and confusing experience as many different competing suppliers must be contacted to determine who can supply the correct product/service at the best price. This problem is compounded when a group of inter-related requests are being simultaneously coordinated. For example, a buyer may wish to book a theatre reservation, restaurant reservation as well as parking.
So-called intelligent agents are available to help an "on-line" buyer in these situations. Intelligent agents are computer programs that simulate a human relationship by doing something that another person could otherwise do for you. For example, the Telescript agent software developed by General Magic, a Silicon Valley start-up company, supports the deployment of software agents to act as personal delegates across a computer network ("Telescript" is a trademark of General Magic company). The agent performs various tasks at electronic venues (servers) called "places" which include electronic mailboxes, calendars and marketplaces.
The Telescript agents gather information resourcefully and negotiate deals on behalf of the client buyer (the principal for whom the agent is working). The agent can be customized by each individual buyer/user so that the agent reflects the choices and desires of the buyer/user. The agents are intelligent in the sense that they can execute contingency plans if the most preferred plan is not feasible given the supplier resources and the general server environment at the time of the agent's dispatch. The Telescript agent can be sent to an electronic florist, ticket seller and restaurant to perform a shopping trip for the client on the other side of the computer network. The details of such software agents are well known and are explained, for example, in Internet Agents, Spiders, Wanderers, Brokers, and Bots, Fah-Chun Cheong, New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, Ind., USA, 1996. Further details can be found on General Magic's World Wide Web site (http://www.genmagic.com).
When an intelligent agent such as Telescript contacts appropriate suppliers (servers) of the same good or service in order to determine which of the plurality of competing suppliers to choose to supply a particular good or service requested by the client, the agent uses only "content-related" information provided by the suppliers in order to make a decision. That is, the agent looks only at whether the supplier can supply the required content of the request. For example, if the client requests a particular videotape to be rented the intelligent agent electronically "goes" to a plurality of on-line videotape rental companies and checks each company to see if they have the particular videotape in stock. The agent also looks at other content-related information such as rental price. However, the agent does not take other considerations into account beyond such content-related information.
Since known software agents use only content-related considerations in deciding amongst a plurality of competing suppliers, a request is processed in such a way that the agent expends the least effort in making a decision as to which of a plurality of competing suppliers to use. While the agent is relieved from having to perform extra processing steps, this least effort approach does not always result in the best possible solution for the client. For example, the agent may choose a particular supplier because of price but not take into account the supplier's cancellation policy which may prove detrimental to the client should the client wish to cancel.
Also, known intelligent agents have not taken into account implications resulting from the order in which portions of a multi-portion request are booked. That is, if a theatre ticket is booked before a restaurant reservation, and an appropriate restaurant is not available for the night in which the theatre is booked, it will be necessary to cancel the theatre reservation which could mean losing the funds expended, as most theatres will not give a refund for cancellations (while most restaurants do not even require advance payment at all).
As another example, a buyer may be trying to coordinate a group of interrelated "on-line" purchase related to a two-week trip overseas. The buyer may wish to book not only the airline reservation but also the parking at the airport (or bus/train reservations), hotel, rental car and restaurant reservations. If the agent books the airline reservation, hotel and rental car it may then turn out that airport parking (and bus/train reservations) is either unavailable or too inconvenient to match up with the other booked reservations. This would require having to recontact the suppliers of the booked reservations and trying to renegotiate a new booking. In the case of the airline, this is oftentimes difficult to impossible without incurring substantial financial losses.
With this booking approach currently used by intelligent agents, there is a good chance that it will be very difficult to recover expended funds made for booked transactions in the event a cancellation must occur.